Highly Flexible Structures ― Modeling, Computation, and Experimentation

Highly flexible structures as discussed in this work by Pai (mechanical and aerospace engineering, U. of Missouri-Columbia) are nonlinearly elastic structures designed that have applications from space structural systems to home appliances. He describes the modeling and computational analysis of highly flexible structures and presents experimental techniques for measuring large static and/or dynamic deformations of highly flexible structures. His graduate-level treatment is intended to close the gap between engineers and applied mathematicians. It presents mathematically consistent and systematic derivations of geometrically exact theories for one-dimensional and two-dimensional structures, solution techniques based on the multiple shooting method for computing numerically exact solutions, fully nonlinear finite element analysis of static and dynamic deformations, and the experimental methods mentioned above. The CD-ROM contains programs for solving example problems, finite element solution sequences, function files of types of linear and nonlinear finite elements, a variety of functions, and video files showing experiments. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)